White Paper

Cisco Collaboration Certifications Overview

Date:

June 09, 2015

Author:

Berni Gardiner

Abstract

On February 17, 2015, Cisco announced changes to the existing voice and video certifications and detailed the new collaboration certification portfolio. This white paper provides an overview of the changes to Cisco certifications with respect to voice and video, outlining dates, and deadlines that may affect your certification process.

Sample

You may have heard the saying, "The only thing constant is change itself," and in the IT industry, that has proven itself so true time and time again.

In technology, advancement and change are good things, but any change comes with levels of apprehension, a little stress, and a lot of new knowledge to be absorbed. The end result, however difficult to reach, can be very satisfying.

In the Cisco world, one of the current areas of change is in the voice and video arena. In previous discussions, these two were referred to as separate technologies, with distinct infrastructure and endpoints to support a differing set of requirements. As a result, there were different certification tracks for both voice and video.

Today, both voice and video capabilities are combined to provide us with a broader, more comprehensive set of communication tools. This approach is often referred to as collaboration. Cisco's training classes and certification tracks have been revised to reflect this convergence of technologies and the Cisco infrastructure that supports it.

On February 17, 2015, Cisco announced changes to the existing voice and video certifications and detailed the new collaboration certification portfolio.

This white paper will provide an overview of the changes to Cisco certifications with respect to voice and video, outlining dates and deadlines that may affect your certification process.

The workplace we have today is vastly different than what our parents and grandparents experienced in their job roles. Where previously you had cubicles and offices that defined each person's workspace, today's office is a bit more disparate and global. Office space is being downsized in favor of home offices or mobile workers. We still need to communicate with each other, but we are no longer able to pop our heads around the cubicle wall to do so. So new tools have been honed and implemented that allow us to track colleague availability, communicate face to face from different locations, and share visual resources such as files, graphics, and whiteboards. This is collaboration.

Tejas Vashi, director, product strategy and marketing, Learning@Cisco, Cisco Services: "For many professionals, work is no longer a place where you go, it's where you are, who you are, and what you want to accomplish. Keeping up with the pace of change, and the rapid, continuous evolution of job roles and skills, is essential to business success. The new certifications are specifically targeted at addressing the convergence of voice, video, data, and mobile applications in mid-sized to large networks utilizing Cisco collaboration solutions. The certifications being announced today are designed to enable IT personnel to both add value with their skillsets and influence the way their employers work."